My Friend, the Serial Killer | 1. Local Man

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Speaker 3 A quick warning before we start. This show contains descriptions of sexual violence and murder.
Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 3 Tell me about your first big break as a journalist.

Speaker 3 Okay, well, it's 1975. I'm a college dropout.

Speaker 3 My dad has recently kicked me out of the house, and I'm an intern at this small newspaper in Connecticut, which means I get the pizza and the coffee, I work weekends, and do anything I can to get my byline in the newspaper.

Speaker 3 Now, I love being in the newsroom. It's full of life.

Speaker 3 I mean, typewriters, police scanners, people shouting. And in the back of the newsroom, there's a kind of closet with these news wire machines.

Speaker 3 And all day and all night, they pound out breaking news stories. And when there's an important story, bells ring.

Speaker 3 One or two for a minorly important story to maybe a dozen bells for, say, the invasion of a country.

Speaker 3 Or for big local news.

Speaker 3 So one day I'm in the newsroom and the bells start ringing like crazy. I rush over and watch as the machine prints out this story.

Speaker 3 A man has just confessed to the cops that he committed a series of rapes and murders. Crimes they didn't even know existed.

Speaker 3 And he's a local man, the serial killer next door. Then it prints the guy's name.

Speaker 3 Wait a second.

Speaker 3 I know this guy.

Speaker 3 And it makes me realize I came close to being a victim myself.

Speaker 3 I was looking for a hitchhiker,

Speaker 3 potential rape victim.

Speaker 3 This is my friend the serial killer. I'm Steve Fishman.

Speaker 3 Since starting out at the Norwich Bulletin, that small Connecticut paper, I've had a long journalism career, won awards, covered a lot of big, dark stories.

Speaker 3 The The serial killer, son of Sam, opened up to me. So did the guy behind the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, Bernie Madoff.

Speaker 3 But this story about the serial killer I knew, the serial killer I became friendly with, was different. It was personal.

Speaker 3 And in a sense, it's where journalism began for me. This story has haunted me for years, for decades, really.

Speaker 3 which is why for a long time I resisted it. I didn't want to revisit this territory.
I didn't want to think about the horror of the serial killers' crimes.

Speaker 3 But there was another reason I resisted.

Speaker 3 I'm afraid my younger self got this story wrong,

Speaker 3 and I haven't wanted to revisit that either until now.

Speaker 3 Episode 1:

Speaker 3 Local Man

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Speaker 3 All right, so take me back. to the very beginning where this story starts.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 probably in my parents' basement in suburban New Jersey.

Speaker 3 I just dropped out of college. All those discussions about enlightenment, poetry, and, you know, whatever, had stopped feeling exciting to me.
Certainly stopped feeling important.

Speaker 3 And anyway, dropping out was kind of a thing in the 70s. Find yourself, remember? So at first, where I found myself was in my parents' house, diligently trying to be a writer.

Speaker 3 My parents had this basement, kind of had small windows, so it was always kind of gloomy. And they had this wet bar that they never used.
It had like a blue for micah countertop.

Speaker 3 And that's where I set up my office.

Speaker 3 Every day I'd write these short stories out by longhand.

Speaker 3 ardent accounts, you know, I don't know, teenage romance in the style of who was then my favorite writer, Hemingway.

Speaker 3 Listen, my parents were not enthusiastic about my current lifestyle choice. My father, in particular, had no idea what the hell I was doing.
He wore a suit every day. He worked in the city.

Speaker 3 He commuted to a skyscraper.

Speaker 3 And every now and then he would thump down these stairs and he'd say to me,

Speaker 3 so when are you going to be done? when are you going to be published these short stories it was as if he was asking me like what the hell are you doing

Speaker 3 i think he kind of thought i was pulling a stunt to him you know i was avoiding being an adult

Speaker 3 and then one day he cracks what do you mean he cracks well it must have been a weekend i remember he sat me down at our breakfast table He's backlit by the sun, so he's got this kind of fuzzy halo effect on him.

Speaker 3 And he tells me, I have to leave the house. I have to leave home.
And then he starts to cry. Wait, so he is telling you to leave the house, but then he's crying?

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's confusing. It was confusing then.
It confuses me now. I have this reaction like, he's crying, so I got to comfort him.

Speaker 3 It's all right, dad. I understand.

Speaker 3 I'll go pack a few things.

Speaker 3 I think the idea for him of tossing me out of my childhood home must have seemed sadistic,

Speaker 3 which in a way it was.

Speaker 3 But he had this idea that at 19 years old, I should be on my way to taking on responsibilities.

Speaker 3 So my dad hustles me into the car and drives me, I think it was like 15 minutes away, and says basically, all right, here you are,

Speaker 3 and dumps me on the sidewalk.

Speaker 3 And in my memory, he just leaves me on the sidewalk to hitchhike.

Speaker 3 And the truth is, you know, I was okay with that. Frankly, I hated being in that basement.
I knew I had to get out of that dungeon. I had needed to leave college and now I needed to leave the suburbs.

Speaker 3 I mean, if I was going to write anything, I needed to find something to write about.

Speaker 3 So there I am on the side of that road. I stick out my thumb.

Speaker 3 You have to remember that back then, it's like 1975, it's just not such a big deal to hitchhike.

Speaker 3 It's a way to get around, especially if you don't have a car, which I didn't.

Speaker 3 I start getting rides, and soon I land that internship at that daily newspaper in Norwich, Connecticut. And you know, I figured, hey, Hemingway had been a journalist too.

Speaker 3 And at that newspaper is where the course of my directionless life

Speaker 3 changes forever.

Speaker 3 I mean, I will never forget the first time I walked into this newspaper. It's like eight o'clock at at night.
The town is totally dead.

Speaker 3 But I walk into the paper's office, which is on the second floor, and the place is lit up like a ballpark. So remember, this is back before everyone is on the internet.
People still trust journalists.

Speaker 3 Newspapers are booming. I mean, I could hear it.
All the clatter of typing and yelling. It was really vibrant.
It was really alive.

Speaker 3 And then I sit down with the managing editor in his little office, who, by the way, seemed really old to me at the time, though he was 28.

Speaker 3 And the managing editor seems confused. I'm not really sure he knew that the paper had an internship program.
So he kind of ignores me.

Speaker 3 He sits across the desk, goes about his business, and gets on the phone with one of his cop buddies because I think this guy really wanted to be a cop more than a journalist.

Speaker 3 And as I'm sitting there, he's got this cop on the line and he's holding forth and they're having a grand old time.

Speaker 3 And then I overhear the cop who's on the other end of the line reveal the name of a dead person so that the paper can include it before deadline.

Speaker 3 And now this editor, my future boss, stands up and yells across the newsroom to the reporter who's covering homicides, do you have the name of that dead guy yet?

Speaker 3 And then he turns to me and his face breaks into a wicked smile.

Speaker 3 As I would later find out, the boss loved drama. He loved competition.
He loved journalism and he loved journalism prizes. I took it all in.

Speaker 3 This did not feel like college. It felt like there were stakes, there were deadlines, there were dead bodies.
And so I'm thinking, this is going to be fun.

Speaker 3 So now I fall into the routine of the newspaper. And also, I keep hitchhiking.
Sometimes the rides are great. You would get these mothers who would have their children in the back seat.

Speaker 3 or, you know, young hippies in mini buses who would offer me drugs and also, you know, dreams of changing my life, like buying a van and painting it purple and driving across America.

Speaker 3 And then there were other kinds of rides. One time, a couple of guys took me to the end of a dirt road, and right before they steal my backpack, one of them says to me,

Speaker 3 don't you know you shouldn't hitchhike?

Speaker 3 Maybe I'm willfully oblivious, but I figure I've been lucky enough. I'm going to keep hitchhiking.

Speaker 3 One weekend, it must have been around the fall of 1975. I'd just turned 20 and I need to get back to Norwich from Boston where I'd been visiting a friend.

Speaker 3 So here I am again on the side of the road, thumb out and waiting for a ride.

Speaker 3 Do you remember the moments when the car picked you up?

Speaker 3 So I was on the side of the road and there's

Speaker 3 a Le Sabre. The car in my memory is kind of a green, you know, a sedan, like a nice enough car, pulled up and

Speaker 3 I was just really happy. But there's this guy, like nice enough.
He had a kind of like a bit of a draw.

Speaker 3 He seemed to be kind of my size. kind of red orange hair.

Speaker 3 He probably was

Speaker 3 10-15 years older than me at the time.

Speaker 3 I tell him I'm going to Norwich and I'm lucky. He says he's from Norwich and he knows a shortcut.
Nice guy. Tells me his nickname is red like his hair.

Speaker 3 So he seemed a little bit like a stranger, but not like strange, but a stranger. And we kind of fell into conversation about like, So where are you from? What do you do? And

Speaker 3 he says, well,

Speaker 3 I'm kind of an electrician, but you know, I'm trying to get on my feet. I said, yeah, it's not easy always.
He said, well, that's,

Speaker 3 you know, I just came out of prison.

Speaker 3 So that's both like a conversation stopper. And now I'm thinking, well, this could be a story, you know, like feature a guy just coming out of prison, reintegration into society.

Speaker 3 Now I'm trying to draw him out about it.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 would you be open to doing a story about it? And he says, sure, yeah, sure.

Speaker 3 I mean, he's a guy who's articulate.

Speaker 3 He's friendly. He's open.
15, 20 minutes go by, and we're getting to my destination. I jot down his contact information.
The car stops.

Speaker 3 I reach for the door handle and it doesn't open.

Speaker 3 The handle just doesn't work.

Speaker 3 I turn quickly, see what the hell's going on,

Speaker 3 and I feel panic taking over.

Speaker 8 Nicole Ernest Pate was 21 years old when a predator assaulted her in her own home.

Speaker 3 He is.

Speaker 1 Kind of the boogeyman in the night that you are truly afraid of.

Speaker 8 She went straight to the cops.

Speaker 3 She said, this sounds like some sort of movie plot.

Speaker 8 No one believed her until one day, the man who helped put the Golden State killer behind bars helped figure out the serial predator's pattern.

Speaker 3 This the serious offender.

Speaker 8 He'd been hiding in plain sight. But even when the attacker was unmasked, Nicole still had questions.

Speaker 3 The why, the what, the why me.

Speaker 8 She wanted to meet him.

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Speaker 3 We're going to come back to that ride. But first, I need to introduce you to a guy in Miami.

Speaker 7 My name's Ed O'Donnell. I'm an attorney.

Speaker 3 Now it's June 1976. Ed O'Donnell is a prosecutor in Miami, Florida, where something strange is about to happen in a courtroom.

Speaker 7 The case started as a rape case. He got basically caught in the act.

Speaker 3 So the alleged rapist is awaiting his bond hearing to see if he'll get bail.

Speaker 3 Before the hearing starts, the suspect motions to an officer in the courtroom. And the officer in uniform walks over, clearly annoyed.
Is this important? He says.

Speaker 3 The suspect replies, is murder important?

Speaker 7 He started wanting to talk to the uniformed guy about murders. And, you know, uniform guys are just that.
They don't take statements.

Speaker 7 They contacted homicide.

Speaker 3 The suspect is brought from the bond hearing to a couple of homicide detectives.

Speaker 7 And they came to me and told me that this guy

Speaker 7 wants to confess to these murders. And we, I said, well, you know,

Speaker 7 let them confess you know

Speaker 3 you never know people confess to things they didn't do but let's find out the detectives give the guy a notepad on it he writes four names of people two boys a girl and a young woman the detectives don't recognize any of these names The suspect tells the cops to go check missing persons.

Speaker 3 One of these detectives, this guy named Charlie Zatrapalak, heads over to the missing persons desk. He starts with the two boys the suspect mentioned.
I said, well, I'm looking for two kids.

Speaker 3 They're together. I said, you got anything like that? I mean, one of the detectives had to be sitting there.
He goes, yeah, he said, I got a case like that. He said, we thought they ran away.

Speaker 3 I said, I don't think they did.

Speaker 3 Okay, consider this scene for a moment. Here is a suspect caught in the act of rape who now wants to voluntarily confess to being a serial killer.

Speaker 3 The murders he wants to claim are not active cases, they're not even cold cases. No one knew these were murders to solve until he starts talking.

Speaker 3 The following interview is being videotaped at the Dade County Public Safety Department, located at 1320 Northwest 14th Street, Miami-Dade County, Florida, room 518

Speaker 3 on June 17th, 1976, starting at approximately 8 p.m.

Speaker 3 They've brought the suspect to a kind of TV studio they have at the police station. It's typically used to record training sessions, but they've decided to use it to film these confessions.

Speaker 3 They will be one of the first ever videotaped murder confessions in U.S. history.
And much of this tape has never been heard before.

Speaker 3 The suspect goes willingly without his lawyer.

Speaker 3 And sir, would you identify yourself? My name is Robert F. Carr III.

Speaker 3 On the video, the two homicide detectives face the suspect, Robert F. Carr III.

Speaker 3 They're just a couple of feet apart.

Speaker 3 Remember, it's the 70s. One cop looks mod with a mustache and bangs, kind of Beatles style.
The suspect is chain smoking. There's a clock on the wall showing the time and date of the recording.

Speaker 3 Behind the suspect is a blackboard, as if it's a classroom.

Speaker 3 The two detectives call the suspect by his first name, Bob, like they're pals.

Speaker 3 Should you talk to me, anything which you say can and will be introduced into evidence in court against you. Do you understand that, Bob?

Speaker 3 If you want an attorney to represent you at this time or any time during questioning, you're entitled to such counsel. You understand that? That's fine.

Speaker 7 So, you know, he was obviously advised of his rights and told that no promises could be made to him. You know, anything he told us, and we've made it real explicit.

Speaker 7 You know,

Speaker 7 we're going to find out whether all this is true. Boy, he unloaded, I'll tell you that.
They'd ask the questions, he'd answer them, and then he'd go,

Speaker 7 you missed this, or he'd give you more. I've never seen anything like it.

Speaker 7 And 40 years later, whatever it is, I've never seen anything like it since. And I've done a lot of homicide work.

Speaker 3 On the tape, one detective asks Bob a question.

Speaker 3 Bob, calling your attention to March 1976.

Speaker 3 Do you have an occasion to be in the Day County area? Yes, I do. Yes, I do.
As near as I can figure, I arrived in the Day County area in Miami on March 25th from Connecticut.

Speaker 3 And upon

Speaker 3 arriving in Miami,

Speaker 3 I proceeded to do certain things that

Speaker 3 I considered to be necessary in

Speaker 3 the crime that I planned to commit.

Speaker 3 What kind of crime did you play like many when you came back? A rope kidnapped and rape.

Speaker 3 I knew that I was going to take a trip. I knew that I was going to Mississippi on this trip.

Speaker 3 I proceeded to

Speaker 3 make a list

Speaker 3 of what items I thought I would need in order to make this trip. And every time I thought of something,

Speaker 3 I was jotted on a piece of paper. He's making a shopping list.
I knew the knife that was

Speaker 3 that would

Speaker 3 that the sight of it would frighten somebody.

Speaker 3 It had to be chrome so that it would show it in dim light.

Speaker 3 I needed rope,

Speaker 3 gasoline,

Speaker 3 canned goods,

Speaker 3 paper towels.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 first on this list of items was

Speaker 3 disconnect the door handle on the right-hand side of the car.

Speaker 3 The door handle disconnected on purpose.

Speaker 3 I was looking for a hitchhiker,

Speaker 3 a potential rape cooker.

Speaker 3 Many victims have grabbed the door handle.

Speaker 3 That seems to be a

Speaker 3 natural reaction for everybody. That's the first thought.

Speaker 3 Grab the door handle and try to get out. The minute the door handle doesn't work, they freeze, they don't know what to do next.

Speaker 3 I didn't know what to do when it was me in that seat.

Speaker 3 So there I am in Connecticut, hitchhiking, about to get out of that green sedan,

Speaker 3 and I'm grabbing the door handle,

Speaker 3 but nothing happens like it doesn't catch

Speaker 3 and I freeze

Speaker 3 what are you thinking in this moment

Speaker 3 I'm not sure I'm thinking at all but if I'm thinking I'm thinking what the hell is going on and what is going to happen

Speaker 3 except that this guy seems nice we had a nice conversation He's from the same town where I live.

Speaker 3 And so for a moment, I'm on the edge of panic. But before it escalates, this nice guy interrupts.
He's almost apologetic. He says, Oh,

Speaker 3 sorry, there's something wrong with the door handle. I gotta get it fixed.
It's warm out, and the car window is open.

Speaker 3 I reach my arm out and open it from outside. I shout goodbye and then hustle along.

Speaker 3 I push that really weird moment out of my mind.

Speaker 3 And I start thinking, you know, I need a feature story for the week. This guy told me he was in a rehab program for ex-cons.

Speaker 3 He'd gotten a job at a gas station. And I think, that might be a story.
A local man trying to reintegrate into society after prison.

Speaker 3 When I get back to the newsroom, I track down the supervisor of this rehab program. And the supervisor gets on the phone and he says, do you know what this guy did to get into jail?

Speaker 3 And I realize I don't. I hadn't asked him.

Speaker 3 You know, I'm still an inexperienced journalist.

Speaker 3 You wouldn't want to know, he says.

Speaker 3 In other words, no story.

Speaker 3 Kind of amazing to me now that I didn't push to find out what crime could be so awful that this supervisor would veto an interview.

Speaker 3 So that was it.

Speaker 3 And then, you know, you had that kind of gray metal desk, and I pulled out a bottom drawer and I slipped his name and number into a folder and put his name on the tab of the folder, Robert Carr,

Speaker 3 and kind of forgot about it.

Speaker 3 Months go by and I start getting assignments. Everything from high school football games to a highly competitive local Easter egg hunt.

Speaker 3 I know how that sounds, but I will tell you that I felt like I was in the thick of it and I was having a blast.

Speaker 3 Still,

Speaker 3 really looking to make a splash. Back then, as I think about it now,

Speaker 3 you know, I was pretty full of myself and pretty eager for the rest of the world to see how important I was or, you know, going to be.

Speaker 3 And that noisy little newsroom felt like the place where I was going to prove myself.

Speaker 3 Looking back, I realized I was very ambitious and maybe blinded by my ambition.

Speaker 3 I think that explains what happens next.

Speaker 3 The news flash comes across the wire, the one with the bells ringing like crazy.

Speaker 3 The one that reports on the local man arrested for a series of rapes and murders. I'm standing in front of the wire machine in my tie.
The newspaper had a strict dress code.

Speaker 3 I can read the story as the teletype is spitting it out and I start to get more details. It says the man captured his victims hitchhiking and then it prints his name

Speaker 3 and I shiver.

Speaker 3 Robert F. Carr III.

Speaker 3 I go back to my filing cabin and then I pull out the contact info I'd stuffed in there months before.

Speaker 3 It matches.

Speaker 3 And suddenly I realize I'd taken a ride with a serial killer. A serial killer who got his victims hitchhiking.
Who had trapped them with a disconnected door handle.

Speaker 3 I had sat in that seat, had a friendly conversation with him, and then I had tried to open that door handle, just like his victims must have done. And for a moment, my mind is back there in that car.

Speaker 3 with what I now know to be a serial killer. And I can feel the panic rise in my stomach.

Speaker 3 But then

Speaker 3 my thoughts turn elsewhere because I'm thinking this could be the break that I've been looking for. This could be a big story and if I land it, it could win awards.

Speaker 3 And you know what? My dad would understand awards.

Speaker 3 And so me,

Speaker 3 ambitious 20-year-old me, who ducked kidnapping or worse is thrilled.

Speaker 3 What a break for my career.

Speaker 3 I'd met a local man who was a confessed serial killer and I have his phone number.

Speaker 3 I dial the number.

Speaker 3 A woman answers. I tell her, I'm calling from the Norwich Bulletin.

Speaker 3 And I say, Mrs. Carr?

Speaker 3 She says, yes. And I say, I have to come over and see you.

Speaker 3 That's next time on my friend, the serial killer.

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Speaker 3 My friend the Serial Killer is a production of Orbit Media in association with Rhyme. Creator and host, that's me, Steve Fishman.
Our senior producer is Dan Bobkoff.

Speaker 3 Our associate producer and production coordinator is Austin Smith. Editorial consulting by Annie Aviles.

Speaker 3 Fact check, Catherine Newhan. Our mixer and sound designer is Scott Somerville.
From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Jonathan Hirsch and Catherine St. Louis.

Speaker 3 Additional reporting by Daniel Bates, Ben Furherd, Andy T. Bow, and Francisco Alvarado.
Special thanks to Cassie Epps at Otis Library in Norwich, Connecticut.